Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Business of SaaS

stripe.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 252 posts

Re: The Business of SaaS

#141

Post by tonyhb »

jcadam wrote: post #119
robodale wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is your linode bill so high with so few users? I see a 32GB plan is $120/month. Do you really need that?

1. App Server (all my Clojure services... and the one transient service written in golang) 2. Postgres (Master) 3. Postgres (Standby) 4. Elasticsearch server (yea, only one right now, you know, few users) 5. One linode running RabbitMQ 6. The linode running NGINX that sits in front of the app server and does all of the reverse proxying Also, 7. The linode running the marketing site (wordpress). I know, I know, I'm a…

You could containerize all of these services and run them on the same machine.

Re: The Business of SaaS

#142

Post by icedchai »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #135
danenania wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd disagree. Optimizing infrastructure costs is the last thing you should be worried about at the start. Your time is far, far more valuable. If it works, leave it alone and spend your time on product/sales/marketing.

He has 5 trial signups after 6 weeks. Let’s be realistic here. His time is literally valueless because he hasn’t made a single sale. Better to save money and expand if and when a paying customer shows up.

$120/month is a drop in the bucket. You need to look at the opportunity cost. His time is worth over $100/hour and better spent on other things (features, marketing, whatever..)

If he gets a ton of customers, he'll need to expand anyway and will waste even more time setting things back up.

Re: The Business of SaaS

#143

Post by warrenmiller »

jcadam wrote: post #112
a13n wrote: post #74

Yikes, that was the best article on SaaS that I've read all year. So much great information. A few things jumped out to me as off: > Conversion rates of low-touch SaaS trials with credit card not required: > 2%+: extremely good Really? 2% seems awful. If a company signs up for your trial, they must have a problem they're trying to solve. If you don't solve 98% of peoples' problems, it seems like you have a problem ge…

Well, I've had my little SaaS up and running for about 6 weeks. - The landing page gets about 30-70 hits per day (excepting the occasional spike) -- how many of those are bots and crawlers, I wonder? - I've had a grand total of FIVE (5) trial sign ups. - No buyers yet - My linode bill is currently about ~$120/month. - Still within the free tier on S3 and Mailgun. - You know, when I'm the only one using the app, I don…

Site is down btw

Re: The Business of SaaS

#144

Post by alchemism »

runevault wrote: post #115
lists wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All AAA games have either micro-transactions, additional purchasable content, or both

I seem to recall seeing a report recently that Activision-Blizzard made more money from micro transactions than non-MTX revenue last year.

The payment model used in Starcraft 2 - a ancient game at this point - is sophisticated. A good illustration of the old game-economics model fused with the new. Oldest single player content is free; multiplayer is free; newer content and cosmetics are purchased in-game a la cart.

Instead of paying $45 one time, you might spend $120 over the course of a few years.

Re: The Business of SaaS

#145

Post by jcadam »

warrenmiller wrote: post #143
jcadam wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I've had my little SaaS up and running for about 6 weeks. - The landing page gets about 30-70 hits per day (excepting the occasional spike) -- how many of those are bots and crawlers, I wonder? - I've had a grand total of FIVE (5) trial sign ups. - No buyers yet - My linode bill is currently about ~$120/month. - Still within the free tier on S3 and Mailgun. - You know, when I'm the only one using the app, I don…

Site is down btw

I think y'all managed to crash my wordpress site. Rebooted :)

Re: The Business of SaaS

#146

Post by danenania »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #135
danenania wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd disagree. Optimizing infrastructure costs is the last thing you should be worried about at the start. Your time is far, far more valuable. If it works, leave it alone and spend your time on product/sales/marketing.

He has 5 trial signups after 6 weeks. Let’s be realistic here. His time is literally valueless because he hasn’t made a single sale. Better to save money and expand if and when a paying customer shows up.

The value of his time is that he can use it to figure out what customers will actually pay for.

Re: The Business of SaaS

#147

Post by tinymollusk »

jcadam wrote: post #112
a13n wrote: post #74

Yikes, that was the best article on SaaS that I've read all year. So much great information. A few things jumped out to me as off: > Conversion rates of low-touch SaaS trials with credit card not required: > 2%+: extremely good Really? 2% seems awful. If a company signs up for your trial, they must have a problem they're trying to solve. If you don't solve 98% of peoples' problems, it seems like you have a problem ge…

Well, I've had my little SaaS up and running for about 6 weeks. - The landing page gets about 30-70 hits per day (excepting the occasional spike) -- how many of those are bots and crawlers, I wonder? - I've had a grand total of FIVE (5) trial sign ups. - No buyers yet - My linode bill is currently about ~$120/month. - Still within the free tier on S3 and Mailgun. - You know, when I'm the only one using the app, I don…

I can help you increase your visit-to-signup conversion rate for free, if you're interested. Just soft launched my own service (www.leadnexus.co), where I will split test your signup forms to find more effective options. Your volume might make it a little tougher to optimize, but I bet I can improve on that ~0.3% conversion rate for you.

(That goes for anyone reading this -- happy to see if I can help, to test out my own idea. Not ready for a bigger announcement, but ping me via the site or travis@leadnexus.co if you want to give it a shot.)

Link - https://www.leadnexus.co

Re: The Business of SaaS

#148

Post by biztos »

samsolomon wrote: post #130
biztos wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, I often feel like Adobe wants it to be higher-touch. I've had the $10/mo Photoshop+Lightroom bundle forever. I almost never use them, and when I do it's definitely not for pro-level stuff, but I find it worth the price to have these tools available when I need them. Adobe, on the other hand, really really wants me to get into Behance, watch this or that instructional video, take a survey, read their bl…

I think you may have it backwards. In SaaS high-touch refers to the actions the company takes on an account, not your engagement with the product. Self-serve items are generally considered low-touch. Knowledge Bases, Documentation, Instructional Videos—these are all things that are created so the company doesn't have to spend time with you. Support is considered a fall-back when none of those options work. High-touch…

Ah, interesting, thanks for clarifying about the CSM.

Right, I'm the perfect low-touch customer right now, and I get that the self-serve things are also low-touch.

So I guess burning a few hours of customer support time would not move me into the high-touch zone. Got it.

Re: The Business of SaaS

#149

Post by biztos »

kbenson wrote: post #124
biztos wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard this before and intuitively it seems right, but only for certain gym cultures. In the US almost everything is membership-based, so a paying member who doesn't show up is free money until they cancel. But there are other places where it's more flexible, for example my gym has monthly passes, dailies, and 10x or 20x passes. The 20x is the best deal if you miss a few days a month due to travel. None of this h…

There are different types of gyms. 24 hour fitness, for example, will happily keep charging you if you don't come in, and if you try to cancel over the phone often tries to force you to come in and do that in person (I'm not sure how much of this part is corporate strategy or poorly incentivized branch behavior).

I'm guessing corporate strategy, and not just for the cheaper gyms.

Good luck trying to get a one-week pass to Equinox without pretending to be a local who's interested in joining.

OTOH I know an awesome gym in LA that is perfectly happy to sell you a week pass if you're visiting. (Maybe that's a film-industry thing.)

Re: The Business of SaaS

#150

Post by lquist »

old-gregg wrote: post #102

> Businesses and investors love SaaS because the economics > of SaaS are impossibly attractive relative to selling > software licenses. I would be careful and not over-generalize. The statement above is opposite of what many late stage investors think of SaaS companies. Their gross margins tend to be horrible. Some are basically in the business of being an intermediary mailbox for transferring money from their custom…

I think that's because too many SaaS CEOs think something else mentioned in the article: "Margins, to a first approximation, don’t matter...If they’re quickly growing, the company can ignore every expense that doesn’t scale directly with the number of customers"

It makes sense in theory, but businesses don't grow to infinite size so fixed costs do matter. Ignorance of this fact drives the lower than anticipated gross margins of many SaaS businesses.

Post reply on HN